'You would like to make some money': Where Qantas is putting its startup cash

Starsha Green is having a problem pitching her startup to a room full of fellow founders at a program that gives entrepreneurs the chance to work with Qantas to develop their business.

She's the founder of Suite24, a short-stay booking site aimed at customers who have stopovers, flight delays or day trips for business but she's finding it hard to give a succinct explanation of exactly what the startup does without sounding tawdry.

'Open to new ideas'

Andrew Joyce, co-founder of recruitment startup Found, says the benefits of being part of the Qantas program for the startups and scaleups involved are both the access to the airline's expertise and developing a relationship with key executives.

"We hadn't done anything like this before but we were excited about working with Qantas and aspiring to have them as a customer," he says.

Qantas group executive of strategy, innovation and technology Rob Marcolina says the airline also benefits from the program.

"A few years ago, we had been very inwardly focused and recognised we didn't have a monopoly on good ideas internally and wanted to create a source externally," he says. "We thought launching an accelerator was launching into market the Qantas brand as open to new ideas."

Qantas is looking for innovation from its accelerator program

Businesses in the program participate in a formal curriculum run by Slingshot and are also assigned mentors within Qantas, "domain expertise" to help shape and pivot the businesses along with potentially access to "a massive corporate partner" to help the startups scale.

"We get access to insights, whether its products, services, or new business models if we get to tap into 350 or 500 ideas we get to tap into innovative thinking around our business," he says. "The other impact to Qantas is the impact internally which is unlocking the innovation spirit internally. From a financial perspective it is very early on but we get to participate in a financial upside particularly with a business where we are making a commercial deal."

Marcolina says the program has buy-in all the way to the top at Qantas, with the startups pitching to chief executive Alan Joyce.

The corporate advantage

He says as a large corporate, Qantas has an edge on venture capital firms and angel investors.

Qantas chief executive Alan Joyce.Credit:Dominic Lorrimer

"I think we have a brand," Marcolina says. "We have a lot of startups that want to work with Qantas and be associated with Qantas. We have a customer base, a ready customer base to tap into and give scale we have a track record of innovation, taking risks, cannibalising ourselves when we need to, like when we launched Jetstar."

Other large corporates like Telstra have also established startup accelerators.

"I'm sure many more will but the financial objective is only one of our objectives," says Marcolina.

"You need to think about what the objectives are of an innovation program, obviously you would like to make money but that is the third or fourth objective for us, we understand these businesses take time to scale and get the returns you want that is just a startup business."